Columbia, SC (WLTX) Families at Fort Jackson will soon have to go off base for most medical treatments. That's because Moncrief Army Community Hospital is in transition from a hospital to an outpatient clinic. Wednesday night the Fort held a townhall meeting to explain what that means for the community and the military families.
To the crowd at the meeting, Fort Jackson Commander, Major General Roger Cloutier told the crowd, "Not only am I the commmander of Fort Jackson, but I am a husband and a father, and my wife and children are going to be impacted by this and so we have sat down with everybody at this table and analyzed the numbers."
Those numbers are the military personnel and their families who will be affected by the transition of Moncrief from a hospital to an outpatient clinic. That change that will be complete by July 31. Col. Traci Crawford, Moncrief commander explains, "Our volume has been low and the acuity of patients, the sick patients, has been low as well, and so its been hard for our providers to sustain their skills based on the number of patients that we're seeing at the hospital. "
With only 221 inpatients last year with an average stay of only two days, the hospital has restructured its personnel. Some military doctors will move to other bases where they can get a higher volume of patients in their area of expertise. Many civilians were trained and hired into different positions. Crawford says, "Those that didn't (move) we allowed them to retire early or seperate early with a severence package, and so we were able to help all of them transition into their next chapter."
Surgery and other specialty needs will no longer be provided at Moncrief. Instead, patients will go to local providers and hospitals in their TRICARE network for those needs. Crawford says, "You'll still be able to see your primary care provider. If your primary care provider decides that you need to see a specialist, i.e an E.N.T. surgeon or an orthopedic surgeon or an GYN surgeon, then you will get a referral to one of the network providers."
They say the influx of patients into the community hospitals and care facilities should not have a major effect. The base currently has 24,000 enrollees into their healthcare network, Tricare. 85% of the specialty care procedures are already taking place off base. Moncrief only did approximately 1,000 surgeries last year. Now those will now be divided among the area hospitals in the network. Specialist doctor appointments off base will increase by approximately 7,500 and that will be divided among the 1,400 providers in the network, depending on the need.
Veteran Daryl Bowman says he doesn't see that the change will make much of a difference. He says, "So you'll go off post It's routine now anyways. So it's not going to be an impact and I think the medical care in Columbia, South Carolina will be as good or better than what we are used to."
Crawford says since Moncrief began serving military families in 1976, their goal has remained the same. She says, "Our goal is to make sure our beneficiaries have access to safe, quality, care and they will have it whether its being provided at Moncrief or provided in the network."
The restructuring will save Moncrief about $1million a year.
Here is a Breakdown of the transition: Inpatient Medical Services, Inpatient Behavioral Health Services and all Surgical Servies will be available at local area or nearby military hospitals.
Services remaining at Moncrief are Audiology, Optometry, Behavioral Health, Pharmacy, Dermatology, Physical Therapy, Immunizations, Laboratory, Mammography, Occupational Therapy, Radiology, Primary Care including, Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics